After a week "off" we returned to our latest permission, JHF1, with a vengeance! This visit was to be a recce on two new fields of winter wheat.Both these fields have been targeted by "nighthawkers" and the landowners are very keen for us to recover all artefacts, leaving the area "barren" and therefore possibly discourage any further nighthawking.

The start however wasn't as smooth as expected due to the ground conditions being so wet and "claggy" and, additionally, the field was heavily contaminated with green waste.The first coin recovered was a silver hammered coin of Edward I in very good condition. The next artefact was a beautiful Saxon zoomorphic strapend and 11 fragments of Medieval pottery came to light which appeared to be of high status.Well the green waste got the better of us and we decided to move to the next planned field.

And what a good move it was too! Within minutes of starting the new survey sherds of C13th pottery started to emerge. Oddly enough, the next find was a Roman nummus! It soon became apparent though that Medieval pottery was going to be the order of the day, apart from the staggering amount of Medieval buckles recovered!The best result was that the field didn't appear to have any green waste upon it!!!

A cut-half Tealby penny and another four hammered coins were recoveredalong with more Roman coins and even more Medieval pottery surfaced.In total, 120 pieces of pottery weighing in at 3,974g (nearly 9 pounds in old money) of which included Roman, Saxon and Medieval material.In all, 12 Medieval buckles/strapends, a Saxon strapend, a denarius of Antoninus Pius, 5 Roman bronzes, 6 hammered coins (one being a Tealby), Medieval lead (fishing?) weights, Medieval mounts, A C14th dress hook and devil's toenail fossil were recovered.

With the light fading we called it a wrap and headed for the landowners house. An earlier text from the landowner's daughter revealed that she was home from London and was very enthusiastic to see us again and excited to see what we'd recovered. After all, she does hold a degree in archaeology!

We were greeted by the whole family with the news of an impending wedding, and the lucky fiancé was there too! You can imagine the mixed conversations between eight people trying to discuss pottery, coin and artefact details, with historical context, and the wedding too!We acquired a superb map, annotated with all the field names. This would make it a lot easier when speaking to the landowner when asking about certain fields marked for survey and accurately identifying fields included in the reports of previous surveys. Everyone was amazed (including us!) at the amount of pottery we'd recovered as well as some lovely artefacts and coins. The best part for us is that the nighthawkers that operate on those fields are going to go away empty handed.

For those of a technical disposition, we used the Déus 13" coils and the familiar standard GMP mode and "Tracking".Again, most finds were recovered within the first three inches of the field surface with some finds actually on the surface itself.Saying that, we did find a signal that was two feet down and we're going back to check it out at the next visit.

For access to the images of all the recovered finds please click here.